THE Metro will be back on track on Thursday after a hole on the line stopped services.

The Benton and Shiremoor will resume from the first timetabled service following emergency engineering works to infill disused mine workings that subsided underneath the tracks at Northumberland Park station.

Nexus, the Metro operator, has completed the necessary work to ensure trains can run safely through the affected area with a temporary reduced speed limit in effect.

This will mean the re-opening of the line between Benton and Shiremoor and will allow a return to a normal timetable across the entire Metro network.

The re-opening of the line follows a week of extensive works conducted with Coal Authority engineers to excavate the site and back-fill the subsidence, which is a former ’bell pit’ up to eight metres deep and thought to be several hundred years old.

Engineers have filled the hole using 80 cubic metres of concrete and have completed drilling exploratory bore holes in the surrounding area to establish if there is any further risk of subsidence.

Metro director, Mick Carbro, said: “It is now safe to re-open the line. I’d like to thank passengers for their patience during the disruption. I’m relieved to say that we’ve managed to get the service back up and running ahead of our original estimate.

“The scale of the task we’ve had excavating and back filling the subsidence cannot be underestimated. We’ve had to drill 23 bore holes to assess the extent of the mine workings and then had to fill the hole itself with some 60 cubic metres of concrete.

“We managed to get the work done without having to take up the tracks or take down the overhead lines. This meant we’ve been able to save a lot of time and beat our initial estimate, which was that we’d lost the service for several weeks on that section of the line.”